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WPP’s Grey Group is the latest agency to open its own consulting practice, Worldwide CEO Michael Houston announced today.

Former Grey London CEO Leo Rayman will lead Grey Consulting as its chief executive. The agency network is searching for his successor at Grey London.
“Our practice will go beyond traditional consulting,” Rayman said in a statement. “We will combine analytical rigor with lateral creative thinking and an understanding of how to make things happen to accelerate growth for our clients.”

Grey Consulting will focus on three pillars: innovation, digital transformation and business and brand design—areas in which Grey Group claims to already have expertise.

“This is not an experiment,” Houston told Adweek. “We’re not ripping something out of the organization and creating something new. We’re building on infrastructure that already exists.”

For example, Houston said Grey’s Dusseldorf hub’s “best practice” has been digital transformation; it just hasn’t been “widely applied across the network.” Grey Consulting will initially be housed within the agency network’s offices in New York, London, Singapore, Dusseldorf and Los Angeles, but its insights can be tapped by Grey offices worldwide.

Houston explained that Grey Consulting was formed because clients wanted a clear, dedicated division to tackle their greatest business concerns.
He said Grey will pull more than 150 of its technologists, strategists and other employees already working within the agency’s network and reposition them under the consulting practice.